Changes in technological and economic aspects of society have impacted on how we understand professional and client relationships. These relationships are constructed in terms of patients/users requiring care, and customers whose complaints have become a yardstick of satisfaction. A consequence of these changes is an interest in the related concepts of emotional labour and emotion work. For nurses, caring for people in illness and in health is central to their work, and it is this aspect of emotion at work that (...) distinguishes nursing from other occupational groups. This paper is concerned with emotion work in a National Health Service Direct (NHS Direct) call centre in the United Kingdom. Drawing upon theoretical perspectives from organizational psychology and sociology it focuses upon the social processes that narrate emotion events in a specific context. It is based on a qualitative study exploring the experience and emotion work of nurses working in a call centre. Issues in caring without the face‐to‐face contact using communication technology were crucial to the way nurses perceived their work. These factors contributed to nurses’ orientation to work and to the way that conflict and dissonance with expectations of callers and managers impacted on nurses’ emotion work. (shrink)

[Alan Weir] This paper addresses the problem of how to account for objective content-for the distinction between how we actually apply terms and the conditions in which we ought to apply them-from within a naturalistic framework. Though behaviourist or dispositionalist approaches are generally held to be unsuccessful in naturalising objective content or 'normativity', I attempt to restore the credibility of such approaches by sketching a behaviouristic programme for explicating objective content. /// [Alexander Miller] Paul Boghossian (1989, 1990) has argued, (...) on grounds concerning the holistic nature of belief fixation, that there are principled reasons for thinking that 'optimal conditions' versions of reductive dispositionalism about content cannot hope to satisfy a condition of extensional accuracy. I discern three separable strands of argument in Boghossian's work-the circularity objection, the open-endedness objection, and the certification objection-and argue that each of these objections fails. My conclusion is that for all that Boghossian has shown, 'optimal conditions' versions of reductive dispositionalism have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

The practice of Ontography deployed by OOO, clarified and expanded in this essay, produces a highly productive framework for analyzing Salvador Dalí’s ontological project between 1928 and 1935. Through the careful analysis of paintings and original texts from this period, we establish the antecedents for Dalí’s theorization of Surrealist objects in Cubism and Italian Metaphysical art, which we collectively refer to as ‘Ontographic art,’ drawing parallels with the tenets of Graham Harman’s and Ian Bogost’s object-oriented philosophical programmes. We respond to (...) the question raised by Roger Rothman concerning Object-Oriented Idealism in Dalí’s work by showing pivotal changes to Dalí’s ontological outlook, from Idealism to Realism, across the aforementioned period, positing the Ontographic intentionality of Dalí’s ontological project in Surrealist art. (shrink)

Contemporary feminist theory is at an impasse: the project of reformulating concepts of self and social identity is thwarted by an association between identity and oppression and victimhood. In Sacrificial Logics, Allison Weir proposes a way out of this impasse through a concept of identity which depends on accepting difference. Weir argues that the equation of identity with repression and domination links "relational" feminists like Nancy Chodorow, who equate self-identity with the repression of connection to others, and poststructuralist (...) feminists like Judith Butler, who view any identity as a repression of nonidentity and difference. Through readings of Chodorow, Butler, Jessica Benjamin, Luce Irigaray, Jacqueline Rose and Julia Kristeva, Weir analyzes the relation of theories of self-identity to theories of women's identity, social identity, the identity of meaning in language and feminist solidarity. Drawing particularly on the work of Julia Kristeva, she argues for a reformulation of self-identity as a capacity to participate in a social world, and sketches a model of a self-identity which depends on a capacity to accept nonidentity, difference and connections to others. (shrink)

Patient and public involvement is widely thought to be important in the improvement of health care delivery and in health equity. Purpose: The article examines the role of experiential knowledge in service co-production in order to develop opiate substitution treatment services (OST) for high-risk opioid users. Method: Drawing on social representations theory and the concept of social identity, we explore how experts’ by experience and registered nurses’ understandings of OST contain discourses about the social representations, identity, and citizenship of the (...) participants and the effects these may have on developing or hindering inclusive and bottom-up forms of patient and public involvement. Results: The meeting sessions that potentially offer room for creativity and problem-solving fail to provide any new propositions for fixing the system. The health care professionals primarily identify themselves as regulators who protect the correctness of their actions and show little interest in considering experiential knowledge on opioid addiction. Conclusion: The participation of patients has been one of the prominent reforms implemented in health care. The goal of client-centered thinking is often emphasised; however, the implementation is not simple due to the strongly institutionalised knowledge and related working patterns and practices in health care. (shrink)

This article brings together two concepts, ‘phantom fat’ and ‘liminal fat’, which both aim to grasp how fat in contemporary culture becomes a kind of material immateriality, corporeality in suspension. Comparing the spheres of representation and experience, we examine the challenges and usefulness of these concepts, and feminist fat studies perspectives more broadly, to feminist scholarship on the body. We ask what connects and disconnects fat corporeality and fat studies from ways of theorising other embodied differences, like gender, ‘race’, disability, (...) class and sexuality, especially when thinking through their perceived mutability or removability, and assumptions about their relevance for subjectivity. While it is important to consider corporeality and selfhood as malleable and open to change in order to mobilise oppressive normativities around gendered bodies and selves, we argue that more attention should also be paid to the persistence of corporeality and a feeling of a relatively stable self, and the potential for empowerment in not engaging with or idealising continuous transformation and becoming. Furthermore, we suggest that the concepts of phantom fat and liminal fat can help shed light on some problematic ways in which feminist studies have approached – or not approached – questions of fat corporeality in relation to the politics of health and bodily appearance. Questions of weight, when critically interrogated together with other axes of difference, highlight how experiential and subjugated knowledges, as well as critical inquiry of internal prejudices, must remain of continued key importance to feminist projects. (shrink)

This book evaluates the widespread preference in philosophy of mind for varieties of property dualism over other alternatives to physicalism. It takes the standard motivations for property dualism as a starting point and argues that these lead directly to nonphysical substances resembling the soul of traditional metaphysics. In the first half of the book, the author clarifies what is at issue in the choice between theories that posit nonphysical properties only and those that posit nonphysical substances. The crucial question, he (...) argues, is whether one posits nonphysical things that satisfy an Aristotelian-Cartesian independence definition of substance: nonphysical things that could exist in the absence of anything else. In the second half, the author argues that standard and Russellian monist forms of property dualism are far less plausible than we usually suppose. Most significantly, the presuppositions of one of the leading arguments for property dualism, the conceivability argument, lead by parity of reasoning to the view that conscious subjects are nonphysical substances. He concludes that if you posit nonphysical properties in response to the mind-body problem then you should be prepared to posit nonphysical substances as well. Mainstream philosophy of mind must take nonphysical substances far more seriously than it has done for the best part of a century. The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

The problem of consciousness, as I present it here, is the problem of reconciling our understanding of consciousness with (i) the evidence for phenomenal transparency and (ii) the evidence that the physical world is causally closed. We might hope that idealism will do this. For idealism is just as hospitable to phenomenal transparency as dualism. And there is a sense in which idealism posits no physical world to be causally closed in the first place. But I argue that idealism has (...) no advantage over dualism and physicalism in the face of this problem. In approaching this issue I also make some taxonomical suggestions that help clarify the options left open by the causal closure argument against dualism. I would urge these on theorists dealing with that argument generally, not just those interested in idealism. (shrink)

I revisit my 1993 paper on Putnam and mathematical realism focusing on the indispensability argument and how it has fared over the years. This argument starts from the claim that mathematics is an indispensable part of science and draws the conclusion, from holistic considerations about confirmation, that the ontology of science includes abstract objects as well as the physical entities science deals with.

Care for patients with multiple illnesses is often provided by several professionals from different parts of the health care system. In these cases, there seem to arise new demands for the communication and the cooperation between different professionals in the primary and the specialized care. In this paper, I shall describe how these challenges are met in an encounter which is a part of interventions called “Implementation Laboratories”. In these encounters, a new tool (care agreement) and a new practice (care (...) negotiation) are introduced and elaborated in internal-medicine patient care. I conceptualized the Implementation Laboratories as “border zones” where the learning processes between different communities are intensified. Learning in the Implementation Laboratories resembles learning at the Boundary Crossing Laboratory described by Engeström, Engeström &Vähäaho (1999a; 1999b). It is interwoven into the process of analyzing problems, planning and testing of solutions in order to improve the medical patient care. Learning appears as collisions between the different perspectives of the patient and professionals of different organizations, and may sometimes lead to reconstruction of boundaries. (shrink)

The care of patients with many illnesses often appears fragmented by many boundaries in the health care system when the care is provided in several locations of primary and secondary care. In the article, boundaries are examined in an interaction between patients and multiple providers in an effort to develop collaboration in inter-organizational provision in a Change Laboratory intervention. Firstly, it will be traced how the boundaries are expressed in the interaction. Secondly, it will be studied how the boundaries expressed (...) in the interaction relate to health care organizations and patient care practices. Thirdly, the practical activity that was embedded in the interaction between patients and providers will be focused on at the laboratory. The expression of boundaries was examined in activity theoretical terms as discursive actions. In discursive actions the ‘lived past’ becomes involved in the situational actions that orient towards future activity. The findings suggest that expressing boundaries uses various linguistic means and it seems relevant to propose that boundaries cannot be studied in a formal way; the analysis needs to be related to the organizational context of the specific study. However, the linguistic means may serve as useful “landmarks” or “pointers” of boundaries that are often expressed implicitly in the interaction. The laboratory session provides an opportunity to study boundaries “on the spot”, or “in their own right”. The realization of the emergent inter-organizational care at the session created challenges for the provision while contradicting some elements of the prevailing provision. During these kinds of interaction, the boundaries between providers became obvious. Furthermore, challenging the boundaries in the normal flow of interaction may be a potential for boundary crossing and even further, a re-constitution of boundaries. Consequently, a boundary crossing represents an interesting unit of analysis for future studies of boundaries and boundary crossing in interaction and discourse. At the laboratory setting was displayed the ability to control others through an indirect use of power that may reflect a simultaneous value system supported by the prevailing hierarchies. In the studies to come, it will be important to pay attention to these implicit power linkages when monitoring the boundaries in horizontal collaborations. (shrink)

This monograph reports on an empirical survey of 394 secondary school students investigating their desire to seek the meaning of their own lives. The theoretical framework upon which the study was based is that of Viktor E. Frankl's hypotheses that a human being wants to seek the meaning in his own life. The questionnaire consisted of tests measuring pupils' concepts of their own life's purposes, significance, and meaningfulness. Questions dealt with values and attitudes toward existential questions. Pupils could also evaluate (...) significance of school subjects in the the search for their own life's meaning. Initial results gave clear indication that students reflect quite a lot on the meaning of life, and most think that topics and questions dealing with existential questions should be addressed at school. Responses to open-ended questions on what they expected from school revealed that students asked for warmer and closer human relationships, more communication, more taking into account of individuality, more opportunity for choices, more support and encouragement, and more knowledge that has meaning for their personal life. The questionnaire is appended. (JD). (shrink)

SummaryMany contemporary philosophers of language believe that realist metaphysics and a beha‐viouristic approach to language are incompatible, debate centring on which is to be given up. In this paper I argue that no incompatibility has been shown to exist. In the first section I attempt to give both a characterization of, and an argument for, behaviourism. Then I attempt to characterize realism more generally than is often done, evaluating the work of Dummett, Quine, Putnam and Wittgenstein, as recently interpreted, in (...) that light. Finally I attempt to sketch a behaviouristic justification of classical predicate logic and offer some programmatic remarks on behaviouristic accounts of mathematics and natural science.RésuméBien des philosophes contemporains du langage, estimant qu'une métaphysique réaliste et une approche behavioriste sont incompatibles, centrent le débat sur la question «lequel des deux doit‐il être sacrifité?» Je montre dans ce papier qu'on n'a jamais pu prouver l'existence d'une incompatibilité. Dans la première partie, je tente de caractériser et de défendre le behaviorisme. Puis j'essaie de caractériser le réalisme plus généralement que cela n'a été souvent fait et évalue dans cette perspective les oeuvres de Dummett, de Quine, de Putnam et de Wittgenstein à la lumière de leurs interprétations récentes. Finalement, je propose une justification behavioriste de la classique logique des prédicats et quelques remarques programmatiques quant à une approche behavioriste des mathématiques et des sciences naturelles.ZusammenfassungManche zeitgenössische Philosophen glauben, dass eine realistische Metaphysik nicht mit einer behavioristischen Betrachtungsweise der Sprache vereinbar sei, wobei sich der Streit um die Frage dreht, welche der beiden Haltungen aufgegeben werden müsse. Ich argurnentiere, dass die Unvereinbarkeit nicht wirklich nachgewiesen wurde. Im ersten Abschnitt versuche ich, den Beha‐viorismus genauer zu charakterisieren und zu seinen Gunsten zu argumentieren. Ich versuche dann, eine allgemeinere Charakterisierung des Realismus zu geben, als das üblich ist, indem ich die Werke von Dummett, Quine, Putnam und Wittgenstein, wie sie neuerdings unter diesen Gesichts‐punkt interpretiert werden, beurteile. lch versuche schliesslich, eine behavioristische Rechtferti‐gung der klassischen Prädikatenlogik zu skizzieren, und lege auch einige programmatische Bemerkungen zur behavioristischen Behandlung von Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft vor. (shrink)

Naive set theory, as found in Frege and Russell, is almost universally believed to have been shown to be false by the set-theoretic paradoxes. The standard response has been to rank sets into one or other hierarchy. However it is extremely difficult to characterise the nature of any such hierarchy without falling into antinomies as severe as the set-theoretic paradoxes themselves. Various attempts to surmount this problem are examined and criticised. It is argued that the rejection of naive set theory (...) inevitably leads one into a severe scepticism with regard to the feasibility of giving a systematic semantics for set theory. It is further argued that this is not just a problem for philosophers of mathematics. Semantic scepticism in set theory will almost inevitably spill over into total pessimism regarding the prospects for an explanatory theory of language and meaning in general. The conclusion is that those who wish to avoid such intellectual defeatism need to look seriously at the possibility that it is the logic used in the derivation of the paradoxes, and not the naive set theory itself, which is at fault. (shrink)

Mit beeindruckender Geschwindigkeit hat der Transhumanismus in akademischen Kreisen und den Medien immer mehr Aufmerksamkeit gewonnen. Er wird von angesehenen Denkern unterstützt. Die ihm zugrunde liegende Triebkraft, Technologie zum größtmöglichen Nutzen der Menschen zu nutzen, hat offenbar ihren Reiz. Dennoch begegnet ein beachtlicher Teil der Menschen dem Transhumanismus mit Skepsis, Abneigung, sogar Verachtung. Ein verwirrendes Phänomen.

In this paper, Weir reconsiders identity politics and their relation to feminist solidarity. She argues that the dimension of identity as “identification-with” has been the liberatory dimension of identity politics, and that this dimension has been overshadowed and displaced by a focus on identity as category. Weir addresses critiques of identification as a ground of solidarity, and sketches a model of identity and identity politics based not in sameness, but in transformative historical process.

Foucault’s critique of early modern political theory aimed at displacing sovereignty as the principle of intelligibility of power. In the genealogical literature since Foucault, sovereignty has become a residual category lacking analytic specificity, largely displaced by governance, in turn equated with politics. We argue that Foucault and the Foucauldians have not understood that the flourishing of governance has presupposed a symbolic regime with a division of knowledge-power-law characteristic of the democratic sovereign. The conflation of governance with politics, together with the (...) sliding of sovereignty under governance, has left Foucauldians unable to diagnose the dangers present in varying possible sovereignty-governance configurations. (shrink)

Drawing on Iris Marion Young's essay, “House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme,” Weir argues for an alternative ideal of home that involves: the risk of connection, and of sustaining relationship through conflict; relational identities, constituted through both relations of power and relations of mutuality, love, and flourishing; relational autonomy: freedom as the capacity to be in relationships one desires, and freedom as expansion of self in relationship; and connection to past and future, through reinterpretive preservation and transformative (...) identification. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a theory of perception distinct both from classical sense-datum theories and from intentionalist theories, that is theories according to which one perceives external objects by dint of a relation with a propositional content. The alternative I propose completely rejects any representational element in perception. When one sees that an object has a property, the situation or state of affairs of its having that property is one's perception, so that the object and property are literally (...) part of one's mind. The most obvious objection to this view is that it embodies a rampant form of idealism. It is argued to the contrary, via consideration of the metaphysics of situations, that the theory is entirely consistent with a robustly realist view of the world. (shrink)

Roberto Esposito has extended the deconstructive theory of the gift into political philosophy, theorizing the gift as the transcendental form of political obligation. In Esposito's philosophy of communitas, the munus consists of the single obligation to give, a logic of donors without receivers, yet it simultaneously establishes relations of reciprocity, mutuality, debt and gratitude. I argue that that indebtedness and reciprocity are not logically possible in a gift system where donors are bound by the single obligation to give, as the (...) donor has no other and the gift no recipient. These inconsistencies may be addressed by distinguishing two forms of gift in communitas: the impersonal gift characterized solely by the obligation to give to the gods/communitas and the reciprocal gift characterized by the obligations to give, receive and return the gift. Esposito's philosophy of communitas would additionally be strengthened by conceptualizing symbolic practices, specifically collective representations, as intrinsic to the munus. As impersonal gift, the munus is a symbolic practice through which the members of communitas represent to themselves their being-in-common. The munus operates as a vertical relation of expenditure made possible by the collective representation of the political we. The reciprocal gift, in contrast, constitutes differentiated social ties and networks: the being-in-difference of communal life. The distinction between the impersonal and the reciprocal gift gives rise to a minimal division between the political and the communal within the transcendental structure of communitas. (shrink)

It is widely held that for an action to be free it must be the case that the agent can do otherwise. Compatibilists and incompatibilists disagree over what this ability amounts to. Two recent articles offer novel perspectives on the debate by employing Angelika Kratzer’s semantics of ‘can’. Alex Grzankowski proposes that Kratzer’s semantics favour incompatibilism because they make valid a version of the Consequence Argument. Christian List argues that Kratzer’s semantics favour a novel form of compatibilism. I argue that (...) List’s compatibilist application of Kratzer’s semantics faces problems not faced by Grzankowski’s incompatibilist employment of them. On the other hand I argue that Kratzer’s semantics make Grzankowski’s version of the Consequence Argument valid only at the cost of rendering it dialectically useless. Contrary to both views Kratzer’s semantics do not appear to add substantial weight to either side of the compatibilism/incompatibilism dispute. (shrink)

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the wide range of issues surrounding "passive euthanasia" and "allow-to-die" decisions. The author develops a comprehensive conceptual model that is highly useful for assessing and dealing with real-life situations. He presents an informative historical overview, an evaluation of the clinical settings in which treatment abatement takes place, and an insightful discussion of relevant legal aspects. The result is a clearly articulated ethical analysis that is medically realistic, philosophically sound, and legally viable.

This groundbreaking volume casts light on the long shadow of naturalistic monism in modern thought and culture. When monism's philosophical proposition - the unity of all matter and thought in a single, universal substance - fused with scientific empiricism and Darwinism in the mid-nineteenth century, it led to the formation of a powerful worldview articulated in the work of figures such as Ernst Haeckel. The compelling essays collected here, written by leading international scholars, investigate the articulation of monism in science, (...) philosophy, and religion and its impact on a range of social movements, from socialism and early feminism to imperialism and eugenics. The result is a broad and comprehensive chronological, disciplinary, and geographic map of a century of monism, as well as a bellwether for innovative new directions in the interdisciplinary study of science, religion, philosophy, and culture. (shrink)

How can we think about identities in the wake of feminist critiques of identity and identity politics? Allison Weir rethinks conceptions of individual and collective identities in relation to freedom.

Between 1980 and 2010 California’s health care policy field shifted from a business-dominated, closed-door pattern of decision making to a more open political arena. Through this process, a wide-ranging and diversely resourced coalition advocating on behalf of beneficiaries became an accepted partner in policymaking. This article examines this transformation, considering its broader implications for the political dynamics of the public-private welfare state and the role of advocacy groups in defending beneficiary interests. We argue that multifaceted coalitions exploit three vulnerabilities of (...) the public-private welfare state, which presents openings for advancing public priorities: 1) diverse and shifting interests, which allow advocates to build broad coalitions that include labor and some providers 2) service gaps that, when publicized, can generate public outrage; and 3) the hybrid institutional form of the public-private welfare state, which can connect service delivery organizations with a broader pro-public coalition. (shrink)

The guiding idea behind formalism is that mathematics is not a body of propositions representing an abstract sector of reality but is much more akin to a game, bringing with it no more commitment to an ontology of objects or properties than ludo or chess. This idea has some intuitive plausibility: consider the tyro toiling at multiplication tables or the student using a standard algorithm for differentiating or integrating a function. It also corresponds to some aspects of the practice of (...) advanced mathematicians in some periods—for example, the treatment of imaginary numbers for some time after Bombelli's introduction of them, and perhaps the attitude of some contemporary mathematicians towards the higher flights of set theory. Finally, it is often the position to which philosophically naïve respondents will gesture towards, when pestered by questions as to the nature of mathematics. (shrink)

There has been much debate recently as to whether the notion of truth, as applied to one's home language, is metaphysically neutral, the interesting metaphysical questions arising elsewhere (in relation to such notions as mind-independence or objectivity or existence). ' On one side, the minimalists, as they have come to be known, favour deflationary accounts of truth such as the redundancy or disquotational theories and conclude that the notion of truth is applicable to declarative sentences in general - at least (...) where there are fairly definite standards of appropriateness for the assertion or denial of such sentences - irrespective of the metaphysical commitments of the propositions the sentences express. Opponents have criticized the minimalist account of truth or denied that it follows from this account that truth is metaphysically neutral. My sympathies in this debate lie with the minimalist but I wish to focus on a serious problem for the minimalist - that posed by the Liar paradox. This problem has featured very little in the recent debate but seems to me to yield the strongest objection to minimalism. I develop the objection in the next section, in §2 sketching what I feel to be the minimalist's best response, namely developing the position not in terms of Tarskian classical biconditionals but rather in terms of the naive rules for truth. It emerges, then, that the minimalist will be forced to repudiate classical logic. The last section, §3, deals with objections to the strategy of §2. (shrink)

Adolescents who are critically, chronically, and terminally ill traditionally have been given little voice in their health care treatment. But over the last three decades attitudes have begun to shift. The legal and medical professions as well as parents and children's advocates have started to recognize that cognitively normal adolescents have decisionmaking capacity and believe these patients ought to have the opportunity to participate in even the toughest of health treatment decisions. Advance directives, if used with sensitivity and care, could (...) prove a valuable means of giving these older pediatric patients a say in their care. (shrink)

Neo-Fregeans argue that substantial mathematics can be derived from a priori abstraction principles, Hume's Principle connecting numerical identities with one:one correspondences being a prominent example. The embarrassment of riches objection is that there is a plurality of consistent but pairwise inconsistent abstraction principles, thus not all consistent abstractions can be true. This paper considers and criticizes various further criteria on acceptable abstractions proposed by Wright settling on another one—stability—as the best bet for neo-Fregeans. However, an analogue of the embarrassment of (...) riches objection resurfaces in the metatheory and I conclude by arguing that the neo-Fregean program, at least insofar as it includes a platonistic ontology, is fatally wounded by it. (shrink)

Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology has employed a variant of occasionalist causation since 2002, with sensual objects acting as the mediators of causation between real objects. While the mechanism for living beings creating sensual objects is clear, how nonliving objects generate sensual objects is not. This essay sets out an interpretation of occasionalism where the mediating agency of nonliving contact is the virtual particles of nominally empty space. Since living, conscious, real objects need to hold sensual objects as sub-components, but nonliving (...) objects do not, this leads to an explanation of why consciousness, in Object-Oriented Ontology, might be described as doubly withdrawn: a sensual sub-component of a withdrawn real object. (shrink)